Cancer sucks. That is undisputable. It destroys the body with varying levels of success and tries to destroy the mind and spirit too. There’s a constant running battle going on that includes family and friends and most of all, the cancer patient. In the process of advancing and retreating, advancing and retreating, cancer begins to spread throughout your life like, well, you know, cancer. Even if the cancer is physically retreating, there are so many ways it can still advance its presence. It can affect marriage, career, parenthood, finances, hopes and dreams, hobbies, passions, personal pursuits, spiritual life…in other words: everything. This post is not to claim how we have prevented cancer from affecting our life in so many ways. We haven’t. This is more about continuing to live and sometimes even thrive in spite of acknowledging the presence of disease in our life.

I titled this post “Intersections” and I define an intersection as the moment when any thought includes even a notion of cancer. These intersections are where cancer gets to see what you’re made of, both good and bad, including stuff you didn’t even know you had. D.L Moody explained it simply when he said “Character is what you are in the dark.” There have been many times over the past three years when no one was around and I was alone to face myself. Kathryn has experienced the same. Sometimes I have been pleased with what I saw, sometimes humbled, sometimes afraid. I hope that as I write about these intersections in coming posts, you are able to find meaning in my family’s stories and an understanding that, although cancer may destroy tissue, it does not destroy character. In fact, it cannot destroy character, it can only illuminate it.